Here’s a copy of the presentation I gave to the Radio Academy’s London Branch earlier today. It was part of an evening called All About RAJARs which saw RAJAR‘s Lyndsey Ferrigan, Hallett Arendt‘s John Shorter and myself talking a bit about RAJAR. Matt Deegan was our host.

[Update] The Radio Academy has uploaded the event’s audio, so you can attempt to listen to me and follow along with the slides. The whole evening is worth a listen, and I start at about 44 minutes into this audio.
My piece was about trying to determine what RAJAR is able to tell us now, and try to extrapolate what might happen in the future. I limited myself to only using RAJAR, and not trying to foist any “maybes” on top of it.
Themes include:
– listening being maintained, but not growing while the population is
– the decline of listening amongst 15-24s
– and the fact that they don’t seem to “get the radio habit” as they get older
– but listening amongst 55+ years olds is on the increase
– Radio 2’s growth
– strong performances from some digital services
– music radio on AM being in disarray
– speech radio on AM holding firm
– digital listening being driven by DAB
– but signs that the internet is giving it a significant boost
– the number of stations being listened to is growing
– early signs that perhaps breakfast isn’t as important as it once was (although still being very important)
– the importance of heavy listeners
A lot to cover in 42 slides.
42 being the answer to the life, the universe and everything.
And today would have been Douglas Adam’s 61st birthday.
[Later] And just to reiterate, since there was a bit of noise about it on Twitter. I really do think anyone who’s trying to predict when digital listening reaches 50% really is a bit foolish. It’ll happen earlier than I “predict” here. This addendum based on what people on Twitter were saying!
[Later still] James Cridland has written up his Twitter based notes of the whole evening.